February 20, 2012

Where I go and get wild ideas in my head by reading a book

By Jesse

Heretical idea isn’t it? A coworker has looked sideways at me over our keyboards a couple of times now and asked, in a disbelieving sort of voice, “what do you do all evening?” This was in response to a conversation we had several weeks ago (he’s kinda slow like that) that included me uttering the sentence, “oh, I don’t have a TV.”

I think he had asked why I hadn’t seen the superb owl ads and my first response of “I don’t watch football” didn’t quell his curiosity. Which brings us to last week when he asked again about how I spend all this free time he envisions me having (sidebar, if you’re so jealous of all this free time, you can ditch the TV too, you all know that right??). To be honest, with the possible exception of a couple of prolonged colds suffered during my high school years, I’ve never really watched that much TV. So when it came time to simplify, it was only logical that the TV be on top of the donate pile. And even now that I find myself living right below the living room and it’s whopping 27″ tubed wonder – I’m just not drawn to it. There’s nothing being shown on that box that I wouldn’t miss in an instant if it meant I could pick up a good book, or play a board game, or talk with my family, or walk the dog(s), or wrench on my bikes, or (are you catching on here?)…

Which brings me to the actual topic I had in mind when I started this, the book I just finished. It’s called The Information Diet by Clay A. Johnson. I’m not a reviewer by nature, so all I’m going to say along those lines is this, read this book. Especially if you spend a substantial part of your day staring at a glowing screen of one sort or another. Johnson has a background in political activism and social media (including starting the company that built and managed Obama’s 08 online campaign). The punch line, if I can do as he did and plagiarize Michael Pollan:

Consume Consciously

What Johnson’s getting at is that we in the western world, particularly the often over educated middle class, have such a glut of information being literally hurled at us 24/7 – that we often don’t know when, where, or most importantly how – to stop. As someone who only recently put himself out there on Twitter, doesn’t have a Facebook account, only follows a handful of blogs and doesn’t really like any of the non-local news sites out there…it’s not like I was suffering as bad as others. But even so, I’ve already made a couple of changes: I uninstalled the Twitter desktop app that lights up with new tweets. I closed the ever-present gmail tab in Safari. And I organized my twitter feed into lists so I can just catch up on what’s most important at that time, like local news, and get the rest later. This way, when I’m trying to…oh I don’t know…write something for this little bloggy here – I’m not distracted by that little blue birdy taunting me with the possibilities.

Like I said, this wasn’t quite the issue for me as I’ve already cut most of these distractions from my life farther back in the simplification step of my Rebalance, but the fact that even I could take something away from this book makes it one I highly recommend. The more harried your day, the more important it is.

Don’t think I didn’t have my issues with some of his analogies, particularly calling what he advocates “Infoveganism.” He also makes some very weak comparisons between things like the FDAs MyPlate guidelines (formerly the food pyramid) that even after reading 3x I still can’t grasp. But overall, his point is valid, the book is well written, and I’ll be putting it aside to be referred to my future clients.

Oh, and I love that his first recommendation when starting an Information Diet is to cut the cable and ditch the TV.

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February 13, 2012

Utilitaire 12…Feb 12th

By Jesse

I had such a good day Utilitairing around yesterday, I decided to actually post about it. I know, radical notion for a guy with a blog…shhhh.

Started out by leaving just after daylight peaked out over the hills (or mountains, depending on your perspective, also knows as the Cascades). What in the world drove me to get up and out that early on a Sunday? The Cascade Bicycle Club‘s annual Seattle Bike Swap of course. And I’m glad I did since as it was I was around 50th in line and by the time the doors opened at 9 the line stretched up the stairs, around the corner and down the entire length of the Exhibition Hall.

I was there for one main reason, Swift Industries was present with their “human error” sale items, basically a scratch and dent sale on their amazing bags and I’ve been planning on using one of their rando bags on the Vaya since I started dreaming of building up that bike. So I get in the door, and of course can’t find their booth. Where is it? In the last aisle I look in (side note, isn’t everything you look for logically in the last place you look for it? If you kept looking after you found what you were looking for…well that’d just be a little crazy now wouldn’t it?) and they have exactly one rando bag! Since it just happened to be waxed canvas and the nice subtle charcoal gray I wanted…it hitched a ride home with me in the front basket on the Trek.

Now I couldn’t just fly through a room chalk full of goodies without at least having a quick peak, could I? Of course not…so before I headed home I found myself a Banjo Bros grocery pannier for a 20 and a stool with a huge cushy bike seat for a seat for a 5. That will serve as my desk chair once I get it cleaned up a bit…too many years as a shop stool I think.

Loaded up Trek (awkwardly, see how the legs of the stool are sticking up all wonky? Yeah, that makes getting on and off the bike just a wee bit difficult. It also makes me understand the appeal of step through frames for cargo bikes) and headed the 5 miles home through the South Lake Union Balagan (Hebrew word, basically means Big Ass Mess). With streets closed and not knowing where they’ve added convenient bike/ped throughways…I ended up detouring into downtown and battling the street car tracks down Westlake. Until I remembered that it’s closed at Mercer, so there was more detouring to Terry where, thankfully, there’s still one of those bike/ped throughways to South Lake Union Park and I was able to hook up to the trail and was off.

Later that same day, I came to remember that I needed to scope out a couple of things at REI, you know, the one I had just ridded right past. sigh. So out the door, this time on the Vaya for some quality time breaking in the Brooks. I’ve got to figure out a better locking set up then carrying both my umpteen pound u-lock and a cable. Maybe I’ll order some locking skewers to match the ones on the Trek…then I can use a single lock…anyway after a fruitful REI stop (including a scouring of the gear garage of course, nothing good though, pretty picked through) it was back home again.

Total distance ridded: ~15 miles in two trips

Utilitaire 12 controls knocked off: #6 – any non-grocery store and one of the freebies for the bike swap

Pictures taken:

The Trek all loaded up and ready for the trek home (sorry, the pun was unavoidable) That’s the Swift rando bag in the front basket and the stool legs sticking out of the grocery pannier. No, I don’t know how I would have gotten the stool home if I hadn’t found the pannier.

This was just amazing to me. It’s February, right? It also happened to be a mildly breezy, high overcast day with temps in the low 50′s so in Seattle that means two things…everyone was wearing flip flops and the sailboats were out. Of course.

So that’s how I spend my Sunday, well that and yard work, cleaning up the yard (3 dogs remember) and some light house work (vacuuming…again, 3 dogs). I’ll return to posting my more philosophically oriented inane ramblings later this week. Hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend and follows it with a great week!

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February 8, 2012

ditch anxiety

By Jesse

Anxiety is the sacrifice of creativity in the service of security. It is the giving up of personal freedoms in return for the promise, never fulfilled, of comfort, cotton wool, air-conditioned shopping centres. Security is a myth; it simply doesn’t exist. This does not stop us, however, from constantly chasing it.

Tom Hodgkinson, The Freedom Manifesto p.11

Just free forming here…so if we want to lessen anxiety – stop striving for financial* security? Will this lead to everyone doing exactly what they love and were meant to be doing? Or will we all end up working fast food or in a call center**? I think that depends heavily on what sort of person you are.

If you’re the kind to stop blindly chasing security in the name of freeing yourself from the anxiety that comes with living in the modern world…

I’m going to wager that you’ll be just fine.

 

 

 

 

*I know he didn’t say financial…but let’s be honest, in the modern world what is the number one type of security we’re trained to strife for?

**No, I’m not knocking call center workers, I was one. It’s simply the most soul-sucking line of work I can imagine someone in the aforementioned modern world being in

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February 3, 2012

update on the whole bike commute/transpo cycling thing

By Jesse

I’ve been so focused on things that make me say…well, duh! recently that I’ve neglected other aspects of this whole Rebalancing thing. For example I picked up my shiny new Salsa Vaya last week. “Salsa Whatta?!?!” I hear some of you muttering over your keyboards, let me explain. First, Salsa is not – in this case – the delicious condiment. It is in fact a bike manufacturer dating back to the formative years of the mountain bike craze in the early ’80′s. And the Vaya is a newer model of theirs designed as a “Road Adventure Bike.” They make this amazing machine called the Fargo that’s an “anywhere you can’t walk Adventure Bike” – but for my mostly urban adventuring, the Vaya was a better fit. Here it is:

Isn’t that a thing of beauty?

 

Here’s where I’m lucky enough to store it during the day:

It’s currently kitted out for winter commuting, come spring I’ll be ordering up a Swift Industries random bag for the front and I’ll be training for some longer distance rides and possibly some light touring.

I’m also participating is something called Utilitaire 12. It’s being hosted by MG over at Chasingmailboxes. She can explain the rules better than I, so I’ll just say that it involves riding for utility and transportation, like I already do; taking some pictures of your rides, like I already do; and sharing your adventures with like minded folks, which I’d love to do more of. So basically it’s a win-win.

I picked up the Vaya last Friday and have put ~100 miles on it so far, including commuting to work every day this week. Though, I do have to say it’s a lot easier to winter commute when it’s 55 and sunny… it is February in Seattle…right?!?!

I’ll leave you with that, I have a couple of other posts swimming around upstairs, but they’re not forming themselves into coherent sentences just yet so I won’t submit you to them until they’re ready.

You can thank me later.

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January 22, 2012

Is everyone this complacent?

By Jesse

I’ve had unfettered access to a car for the past week or so and I’m a little upset with myself. I’ve already, in that one week, become complacent. Forgot to swing by the store on the way home? No problem, just hop in the car and go pick up that one thing. Did I mention that the store is 4 long blocks away from my house?

How in the name of what-ever-you-consider-holy did that happen?!?!

As I sat in the kitchen this morning watching it get light out and enjoying my tea, I started thinking about this and ended up – as usual – with more questions than answers.

How did my resolve slip away so fast and where’d it go?

Why didn’t I notice it happening?

Aren’t I supposed to have some sort of inner dialog that chimes in when I’m in danger of something like this? Where was that voice?

Hhhmmm, I wonder what other of the myriad issues out there these days can be traced back to complacency? That’s the one that really got me thinking. As I drove to the farmers market later this morning (see, even after thinking about this all morning, I still hopped in the blasted car!) I started formulating a response.

Yes.

Yes, complacency can be said to be at least one root cause of quite a large number of issues. I don’t pretend to be an expert is much of anything, let alone deep thinking on hard topics, but hear me out. How many of the “diseases of modern life”, “western diseases”, “Syndrome X”, or whatever you want to call the scourges of Diabetes, Fibromyalgia, Leaky Gut, etc…do you think we could eradicate if people would just go back to thinking for themselves? Instead, we’re conditioned from a young age to listen to what the “experts” tell us and give up on all that critical thinking nonsense.

What do you think would happen to the western worlds global carbon footprint if a few more people would eschew the prepackaged “American Dream” that developers have been selling us for 50 years? Do we really all need 2500 square feet of detached house with a 3 car garage and 1/3 acre of lawn to suck in whatever pesticides and time we otherwise would have had to spend with our families? Without all that space to pay to heat and cool, and all that storage space to fill up with unnecessary purchases and an extra car…can you imagine how much good that money and time could be put to???

This line of thinking has been with me for some time now, it was one of the driving factors behind my purge and subsequent dive into voluntary simplicity (the year of unemployment notwithstanding). I don’t claim to have any answers. I truly wish I did. I wish I could at least knock off a list of things I’ve done and am doing to make my little part count. Actually, some of what I’m doing is geared towards this end. The idea behind getting certified as a personal trainer is so I can make some headway towards becoming more of a wellness coach. I’m hoping to be able to guide others through the sort of concrete changes to diet and lifestyle that have worked so well for me, and in that way, one person at a time, bring the national average weight down and lighten the load on the health care system. Seems rather lofty doesn’t it? I do honestly believe that one person can make a difference, and that the more one persons I can get involved will just help that much more.

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January 14, 2012

Reawakening simplicity

By Jesse

I’ve had a post bouncing around in my skull for a few days now. Something about getting back on track when the simplicity train gets derailed, except way more eloquent of course. My new contract position started Thursday, with nearly two full days of sitting on my hands because HR forgot to pass my paperwork up the tree to the fine networking peeps who create accounts. And you know, as an IT Monkey having an account so you cal log onto a computer is kinda sorta a big deal. End result, I filled pages in my journal with thoughts, ramblings, and ideas about how I got so badly redirected away from keeping things simple and what I intend to do about it. Now that I’m sitting here at the keyboard instead of the pen, am I going to refer to those notes, ideas and thoughts? Nope. I’m just gonna ramble.

Back when I started my last contract I was coming off of nearly a full year of either being in school and looking for work or straight up unemployed and looking for work. That made it a whole heck of a lot easier to not buy unnecessary STUFF. Then that contract started and the paychecks started rolling in. I started paying room and board to the family member whose basement I inhabit and earmarked another chuck to begin paying back the dept they had allowed to accrue through that preceding year. However, there were also a few things that I really did need to pick up, and I think that’s where it all began…

I’m still loosing weight, albeit a bit slower than initially, so I needed some work appropriate clothes that actually fit and didn’t look like sackcloth being held on by rope. I needed a bike that fit and worked. I needed a new computer (yes, for arguments sake I consider a computer a necessity, deal). I had piles of belongings around the edges of the basement, so some shelves would come in handy. My feet froze when I rode to work, so some sort of winterized boots would be nice. And the list grew. I did end up finding a great craigslist deal on some folding shelving, so that’s solved, and I tweaked my existing boots to make them a bit warmer, so again, problem solved. But what about the growing pile of other STUFF? Where’d that come from and who let it into my life?!?! Where’d the piles of belongings mentioned above actually come from? I had no idea, but I wanted it to stop. So I started by assessing my daily routine to see what I could see.

I’ll skip the gory details and just give you the good stuff – I had fallen back into a more standard worker bee daily routine. I wasn’t getting up as early as I did when I was unemployed (which seemed odd, but understandable since I was exhausted by the end of the day), I was spending little bits of cash here and there that I hadn’t been spending because there just was no cash. I had stopped meditating every day, actually I had all but stopped completely. I was drinking coffee everyday (it was provided by the office, but still). Overall I had returned to a place I didn’t like. Time to remake some better habits.

I picked two of the things that were bugging me, not meditating and spending little bits all over the place, to focus on this month. Somewhere I read (actually several somewheres) that it takes either 21 or 28 days of performing some task or behavior for it to become habit. So the idea here is to meditate daily for the rest of January so that I’ll be back in the habit of daily meditation. I will also be tracking my spending by writing down where every cent goes this month so I can look at it all at once and figure out what to cut and what to keep. Same deal, after this month watching my spending should be ingrained as a habit and I should be able to cut out the actual tracking and just be able to stop and look at what I’m doing and decide on the spot if it’s necessary or not.

Both of these habits, while seeming disparate, actually have a common root – being present in the moment.

And yes, I see the irony in adding things like tracking spending to my daily routine in the name of simplicity…but the end goal is to keep it simple. Nobody ever said there wouldn’t be some work to do in the interim.

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January 1, 2012

time to reflect

By Jesse

You are rich if you have enough money to satisfy all your desires. So, there are two ways to be rich: you earn, inherit, borrow, beg, or steal enough money to meet all your desires; or you cultivate a simple lifestyle of few desires – that way you always have enough money.

- Dan Millman

I decided many years ago that new years resolutions weren’t for me. Just another vestige of American Culture that I couldn’t seem to make fit with my outlook on life or my own priorities. That said, I have no problem with declaring my intent to develop certain new habits from time to time (and occasionally in the past these declarations have coincided with a certain date…what can I say). The difference – yes, there is one – is that developing or breaking a habit is a long term process involving action, while making a resolution is more of a declaration of intent. You’re saying, “in the new year, I intend to do something life changing…” Or, “in the new year I intend to stop doing something detrimental to myself and/or my loved ones.” When you endeavor to change a habit, you have to actually do something about it – you have to put down the cigarette, pick up the weights, etc…

I found myself reading through the journal I carry with me and was surprised to find that I had started it on new years day, 2010. That means I was still living abroad, but already knew that I would be returning to Seattle and was beginning to work through where my plans had gone awry leading to said return. What I was more surprised by was the common threads in my thinking then as compared to now. The quote at the beginning of this post is from The Way of the Sacred Warrior, by Dan Millman. It’s the only quote I wrote down from that book, which I like quite a lot – but I also find it a bit trite. Anyway, something about the succinct way Millman summed up my own thinking on simplicity resonated with me and I decided to copy that line into my journal. And now, 2 full years later, it still resonates.

Over the intervening years, actually starting with my epic purge prior to the overseas move, I have indeed simplified my life considerably, learning many lessons along the way. I’ve learned that it’s much easier doing laundry every week if it means have less clothes to sort through. I’ve learned that I really like walking and biking as my primary means of transportation, and that you see things you never would have seen from inside a car. I’ve learned that 3 adult males can live in under 650 sq ft comfortably. I’ve learned how to entertain myself without TV (much easier than most people think and comes with the added bonus of reading a lot more). But what struck me hardest as I reflected on all of this, was how much easier it is to roll with what life throws at you when you’re not carrying tons and tons of extra STUFF along for the ride.

I’m what they call “Between assignments” in the contract IT world. This means that I don’t know when my next paycheck will come or where I’ll have to go to earn it. But living simply enables me to take that fact and roll with it. If I had car payments, insurance payments, storage rental fees, exorbitant mortgage rates, etc…I would be in dire straights right now (as my former co-contractor was, he has all of the above payments to deal with). However, as it is, I know that I have enough saved from the last 3 months to cover me until the end of February before things get that tight, and that’s from just 3 months of work. And I know that the market is picking up, and with my newly acquired skill set in Windows 7 deployment I’ll be able to find something in the coming weeks. Besides, my personal trainer training class starts in 3 weeks and I have reading to start doing before then.

OK, to tie the end to the beginning, when I started purging I approached it as if I was changing a habit; that being the habit of acquiring more STUFF than necessary. By seeing it that way, I was able to make changes that have stuck with me for years and are now just part of who I am. I’m still susceptible to the occasional splurge (have I mentioned how comfy that Brooks saddle is?) but only if it’s something that I know I’ll get enough use out of that it’s justified. I ride at least 4 days a week so being comfortable while doing so is important – but that’s another habit for another day and another post.

Happy New Year everyone!

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December 25, 2011

How I spent my Christmas holiday…or…How to survive Christmas in Seattle when you’re a Jewish transpo cyclist

By Jesse

Wasn’t sure where to take this post after that title came gushing forth…I know, how about I tell you what I did today. First let me wish you a Merry Christmas if it’s appropriate, and if not I hope you’re all having a lovely long weekend.

Now, I started by sleeping in – which for me means 7.30 these days. Had my morning tea and read headlines and RSS feeds (both of them, it is Christmas day after all). Then it was 8.00. Something told me it was going to be a long day.

I settled in for a good read (still working through What’s the Economy For, Anyway? by John De Graaf and David Batker) and made some more tea. Around 10.30 I went back down to the basement and played interior designer by rearranging my meager furniture, did some laundry and cleaned the part of the garage where I work on my bike. Then I took up the sledge hammer I use for working out and swung it for a total of 120 swings. If you don’t know about mace swinging, look into it. It’s one of the best core workouts I know of, combined with really helping my shoulder mobility as I try to make up for never rehabing my torn rotator cuff. I also lifted my slosh tube a couple of times and held it aloft for a solid minute. Again, look it up, and again, amazing core and fast twitch muscle workout. Tossed in some sandbag lifting and squats with the slosh tube and called the workout over.

Midday decided to treat the dogs and took the herd out to Marymoor for some quality time.  You can tell the dedicated dog owners by who’s there on a windy, rainy Sunday. You can also tell who’s getting tired of visiting relatives the same way. You also know the dogs are going to be even happier to be there than they are anyway so a good time was had by all. Got home around 2.00, had a snack then headed out for a shortened version of the ride I had planned on taking this morning…but for the aforementioned wind and rain – and my remaining head cold (it’s been a long week here at casa de snot).

I was initially going to go downtown and to the waterfront to enjoy the lack of cars on the roads, maybe get some pictures from the middle of intersections, etc…then along the waterfront trail, through Interbay to the newly completed Ship Canal Train, along that into Fremont and home via the Burke Gilman. So I ended up cutting off at South Lake Union Park and just heading up Westlake to Fremont then picking up the trail and heading home from there. Ended up being ~9 miles instead of ~15-16, but then with breaking in a new Brooks Flyer I don’t think my hinterlands minded cutting the ride short. Besides, I need to run a couple of errands out in Ballard, so it’s another 12+ slated for tomorrow.

I did manage to get a couple of decent pics along the route, despite only figuring out that my little camera was still set to overexpose by 1/3 stop from my last outing after getting halfway through the ride and the light being really intense (sun finally made an appearance just as I was heading out).

(click any image for larger version)

The ride as it currently stands. ’93 Trek 930 Singletrack, from the days of Trek building their lugged steel frames in Wisconsin. I had new brakes, levers and shift pods installed at the LBS. All I’ve really done myself is installed an adapter that lets me run threadless clamp on stems, put on some VO Tourist handlebars, a rack and fenders (it is Seattle after all), and just added the black Brooks Flyer saddle.

Looking back towards downtown and Capital Hill from the west side of Lake Union.

Doesn’t do justice to the light. Looking over Queen Anne Hill from Gasworks Park.

Downtown from Gasworks just before sunset.

And now I’m sitting at the kitchen table with yet more tea sharing the day with whoever wants to read about it. I’d say that counts as a good day, wouldn’t you?

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December 10, 2011

Ever have one of those…well months?

By Jesse

Where you just can’t organize your thoughts?

Where everything you touch in one particular area of your life just seems to turn to – well let’s say steaming turds?

Where your future is so up in the air you don’t even know if you’ll have a job come Jan 1?

How about where you crash your bike on the way INTO work…have to work a full day with road grit on your pants and a badly skinned knee and bruised hip…then have to ride home wondering when something was going to fall off the bike you JUST finished getting built? Ever have one of those months?

Let me tell you about mine…actually I think Friday pretty much sums it up. Where to go from here? Well first, I’m going to keep riding. I’m going to redouble my job hunt efforts after new years, since apparently nobody’s making hiring or contracting decisions right now and my contract expires at the end of the month. And I’m going to keep on keeping on as they say.

On to that thoughts gone wild issue…I opened up WordPress probably dozens of times since that last post with every good intention of getting a post to come out and play. You can see the results, it’s been what…nearly a month?!?! After swearing several times that I was going to post at least twice a week, I’m done swearing. I’ll get into a groove eventually, and until that time I hope at least some of you stick around and that the G-bots keep working their magic and drive some random traffic my way.

I’ve been reading quite a bit recently. Starting with a book club book called Primal Body, Primal Mind. Can’t say I recommend that one, kind of a bipolar book actually, one chapter will be FULL of great suggestions and the next will be a laundry list of medical terms and supplements that should all be taken in a specific order, beginning at the right time of day and only on alternating first mondays in months with 30 days and only if you stand on your head first. Or something fricking thing. Now I’ve moved on to The Long Descent and What’s the Economy For, Anyway? The first is by Ecological Historian John Michael Greer and deals with a supposedly hopeful view of the aftermath of the oil age – and the second is by John De Graff (of Affluenza fame) and Michael Batker and looks at questions of economic collapse and ways to build a sustainable future.

If I come out of the next couple of weeks able to go on then we’ll know these guys are on to something.

I’m working on a guest post for a blog about bike commuting, but with my own bike issues (let’s just say I’ve been through 2 Local Bike Shops and am working on my third trying to find one that doesn’t screw things up as a part of their mission statement) it’s been tough getting started. If I can get that off the ground I’ll put up a cross link here. And if I can organize any of my thoughts relating to any of the actual topics I keep promising to write about (let’s see theres the tiny house movement, simplicity, transportational cycling, the Paleo/Primal lifestyle that will heretofore be referred to as part of Rebalancing – did I miss any?). I’m getting just tired enough of reading my own broken promises that I’m hopeful for January being full of interesting posts over in these parts. And I’m feeling so good over all that they may not consist of the sort of scree that last one on non-consumerism turned into.

sorry about that one and no, I’m not going to delete it, it’s still part of the journey.

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November 20, 2011

Cleaning house and a couple of pictures

By Jesse

After writing about how I had some great half written draft posts sitting around waiting impatiently for me to get around to finishing them, I just made the executive decision to wipe them out and start fresh. One of the points of this blog is for me to be able to look back at what topics were holding my interest during a certain time period, and what if anything others had to say on said topic. Just because I started a post about the future of technology in October, doesn’t mean my thoughts will be the same in November. Or for that matter, it doesn’t mean I’ll still be interested in getting those thoughts out in writing.

So no more drafts. If I want to get a post out, I better do it when I have the time and sustained attention span to get it out in one sitting. Or I can just keep it really really short and add a couple of pictures, like these:

All taken with my iPhone. The middle one is my puppy Shira, if I haven’t introduced her yet I will soon, meanwhile this is one of her favorite poses – watching out for the neighborhood. But then apparently her head gets really really heavy and she has to rest it…

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